by Mason Sabre
“It was by the Council.”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “I don’t believe you. You lie.” She stalked over to the fireplace, her back to all three of them as she moved an ornament into one position and then moved it back again. She paused, her hand resting on a ceramic cat. “It’s not Jessica,” she said, more weakly this time, her shoulders starting to sag.
Malcolm stood up quickly and went to her. Without a word, he placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to pull her into his arms. With a soft whimper, she clung onto him tightly as sobs wracked her body and tears began to fall.
Chapter 5
Gemma
Cade tapped Gemma on the shoulder and waved his phone at her. She glimpsed Danny’s name on the screen and nodded before he turned and slipped out of the house. He was lucky. She wished she could sneak out with him. Maybe make some calls, do something important, instead of standing there, watching her father console Angela, all the while feeling the other woman’s pain like a knife to the gut.
Giving the grieving mother some privacy, Gemma slipped into the hallway, where she could see Cade through the glass. He was pacing as he spoke, his strong legs moving in tandem with whatever he was saying. She assumed he was talking to Danny, but since she could only hear Cade’s side of the conversation as he relayed details of what had happened that evening, she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure.
Gemma felt trapped—between intruding on Angela and her father, and intruding on Cade’s conversation.
She turned and walked down the hallway, glancing along the walls at the pictures as she did—they were full of photographs of Jessica. They started from a scrawny child with freckles and braces to the woman she had become.
The image of Jessica’s dead and mutilated body sprang unwanted into Gemma’s head when she reached the end. That picture would be missing from this wall of life, she thought with a shudder.
Turning back, she caught sight of Cade dialling someone else, and when he put the phone to his ear and said, “Father;” she pictured Trevor’s face as he heard the news.
Trevor was part of the Council—sometimes, she thought, he liked to think of himself as the Council. His goal in life was to wield two execution orders. One with Gemma’s name on it, and the other with Phoenix's—the half-breed Cade had taken in and given a home to, much to his father’s disgust.
When Cade had finished his call, he came in and pulled the door closed behind him. “I asked Avery to check for her car,” he said, his voice low. “There was no car. Not even outside on the main road.”
“She wouldn’t have walked. Not to the estate.” The estate itself was in walking distance, if you were into walking, but it was a hike. It had once been used for manufacturing chemicals. Now it was old, abandoned. The long road to it was used for haulage, but it was set far back from the main road that ran through the town.
“She had to have got there somehow," he murmured. "We figure that out, we might find who did this."
“Danny?”
He shook his head. “He is at home … has been for a few hours according to my father.”
“Did you speak to him?” Not that Gemma thought he had anything to do with this, but he might have known if she was seeing someone.
“No," Cade said. "I didn't want to give him this over the phone."
“Do you think he knows something?”
Cade exhaled heavily and then shrugged. His expression changed, his eyes deepening in colour, his emotion just under the surface. That was a shifter tell—their eyes. The subtle change made Gemma’s stomach tighten in response and a profound need to soothe him flooded her. “I have to talk to him and find out when he last saw Jessica. I have to tell him, too, although I am sure my father would happily do the honours.”
Gemma scoffed. As long as it wasn’t his child getting gutted, he really didn’t care. “What about Michael?” Michael was Gemma’s best friend’s younger brother—Shelley had been her confidant and rock ever since they were little girls.
"I'll have to speak to him, too. This is all such a mess, Gem. We haven't even begun, and I can feel it. Its like a damn explosion waiting to happen.” He rubbed a hand across his face as he exhaled. “I need to get them all rounded up. I need to speak to them all together."
"We'll do it. I can speak to Michael."
Danny, Michael, Evie and Jessica were all friends. It was natural they would be. They had been dragged to Council meetings since the day they were born. They had been dumped in rooms together to play. No one could really blame them for forming friendships … and other things.
“Do you think Danny or Michael is the …” She trailed off, throwing an anxious glance towards where Angela was. She didn't know about the baby yet.
Cade’s brows drew together in a scowl. “Maybe.”
It would be a complete mess if Danny or Michael turned out to be the baby’s father. Danny was wolf, just like Cade. Jessica was fox, and Michael a fae. Inter-species laws would come into play, and if one of those boys turned out to be the father, there would be an execution order around their necks so fast that it wouldn't matter who had done this to Jessica.
The father would be dead.
He gestured towards the lounge door, and Gemma took a deep breath before heading that way again. They found a snivelling Angela sitting on the sofa once more with Malcolm close by her side, his arm around her shoulders.
Cade cleared his throat. “I need to ask you some questions,” he said. Malcolm reached for Angela’s hand and nodded at him. “Did you know Jessica had a boyfriend?”
Angela raised confused, watery eyes to his, sniffing as she shook her head. “My daughter didn’t have a boyfriend.”
Cade’s tone and demeanour remained professional. “No boys she mentioned? Someone she spent time with?”
Again, she shook her head and then wiped her nose with a bunched-up tissue. “She wasn’t into boys yet. She would have told me. You think a boy did this?”
Giving her nothing in response, and with only the slightest of hesitations, he continued, “Did you know Jessica was pregnant?” The air around them became charged, anger flashing across the woman’s features.
“How dare you. Jessica was not pregnant,” she spat out. “She didn’t have a boyfriend. She didn’t have sex. My Jessica is not like that. She is not like you.”
Gemma couldn’t see Cade’s face from where she stood, but his back grew rigid at her words. He kept up his interrogation despite her personal attacks, though. Angela could deny the pregnancy all she wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that it was true. Cade didn’t need her answer to confirm that. Her reaction was enough to say she didn’t know shit. The Jessica Angela knew was a whole different Jessica to the one that had actually existed, it would seem.
“Do you know where she was this evening?”
The woman’s face was tight as she replied stiffly. “She went out with friends. They were supposed to be going for a run together—camping.”
That wasn't unusual—pack youths going to stretch their legs and flex their claws together, away from the adults and all the rules. “Do you know where?”
“No.” Angela shook her head. “She didn’t tell me anything. I thought that was her coming home just before. You know, maybe she didn’t want to camp. Jessica liked pretty things. Not mud and—” Her voice cracked with the words. "It's not my Jessica ... "
“Did she take her car?”
She gave a weak nod before breaking down again and bringing her hands up to cover her face. Malcolm patted her back gently, soothing her, and making Gemma scowl. When he had told them all that Stephen was dead, there had been none of this care and compassion he was showing Angela now. He’d simply informed them then walked off. Gemma hadn't even realised her father was capable of such compassionate gestures.
“There was a baby found with Jessica,” Cade continued as considerately as possible. “She was about halfway—”
“No,” Angela jumped up from the sof
a, her body stiff and her chin held high. “She wasn’t pregnant. I’ll have your job if you even try to—”
He held his hand up, signalling for peace. “Could we possibly see her room? Maybe there is something that tells us who she was with and what she was doing. Did she keep a diary? Emails?” Cade was backing out as if he had already been given permission to go snooping.
“Get out,” she snapped. “Get out of my house."
“Angela …” Gemma started to say, hoping to defuse the situation. “We just—”
“You don’t just anything,” she shot. “I don’t care what you two think. I don’t care what you think my Jessica did.” She jabbed a finger toward Gemma, her eyes bulging as if she had cried every tear from her body. “Just because this is something you two did. Do not think everyone else has done the same thing. Do not dare think Jessica would do this. I knew letting you train her was a mistake. I told your mother when she offered … blind, she is. But I see you. Babies like that, they—”
“This has nothing to do with anything. How dare you … Who do you—?”
Cade grabbed hold of Gemma’s arm before she could charge for the other woman. Any sympathy she had felt for Angela vanished at the hurtful words …
Pain caught in her throat like an old rusty razor blade. It took everything she had not to go in there and rip her head off. She gripped Cade’s hand, holding onto him for some semblance of peace, like he was the only thing keeping her steady. He squeezed back, letting her know he had her. Letting her know he was her lifeline. One touch and he could calm any storm that was brewing in her gut—but this one was a raging war.
“We need to see Jessica’s room for our job,” she ground out, desperately trying to compose herself and keep her voice professional.
Angela walked rigidly to stand in front of Gemma, her face cold and twisted.
“Perhaps this can wait until the morning,” Malcolm said firmly, having come to stand between the women.
“The sooner we check everything in her room, the sooner we can talk to people,” Cade said to Malcolm, his tone back to business. “We need to know who she was seeing.”
"I told you—"
Malcolm held a hand out to hush Angela. “As head of the Council, I am ordering you both to leave.”
Anger flooded Gemma. Right now, this wasn’t the voice of her father. This wasn’t the voice of her alpha. No. It was the voice of a man who seemed to have too much emotion invested in this.
"Father—"
"This is not up for debate, Gemma. You both leave. Right now. You come back when I say you can."
Gemma glared at him. He was pulling rank and making a dreadful mistake. He was hindering an investigation … and for what? Lust? Love? Whatever it was between Angela and him, it was causing him to make wrong decisions.
Resentment and frustration burned in her gut as she stared at him, defiance on the tip of her tongue. But Malcolm wasn't going to listen, no matter what she said.
If they still couldn’t get access tomorrow, they would apply for a warrant … They would go to Trevor and ask him for help if they needed to—he’d be only too happy to prove that their alpha was lacking good judgement.
Shaking her head at him in incredulous disbelief, she turned and stormed out of the room.
Chapter 6
Gemma
There was nothing Cade or Gemma could say to Malcolm’s decision. It was wrong, in so many ways, but the head of the Council had spoken and given his orders. Gemma walked out of Angela’s house in angry silence. She knew, without needing to look, that Cade was behind her, but neither of them spoke until they were both sitting in his car with the doors closed and the outside world shut out.
“Do you think she went of her own accord? To the estate, I mean?” Gemma asked finally. It was so hard to move from the thorn sticking in her mind about her father, but she made herself. If she didn't, her head would start swimming with what she had seen, and maybe that wasn't such a good idea. "Do you think she got there by herself?"
Cade tapped his thumb against the steering wheel before answering, a habit when he was thinking. His eyes focused ahead of them, to where Jessica's car was supposed to be. “I don’t know," he said, shaking his head. "There are no scents, nothing at all. Not even Jessica’s. It’s like she just magically appeared there.”
“Maybe,” she agreed musingly. “She could have been carried?” There hadn't been any blood on the floor, Gemma realised. Nothng. The mess the gestational sack alone should have made … But then, that didn’t mean shit. “This has to be Other, right?” Gemma asked, thinking out loud. There was no other explanation. If this was Human, it would have been a mess. But then, if this was Human, it would have been their body that was found, not an Other’s. Jessica was a dumb kid, but she was still a shifter. “A Human couldn’t have done this, and if it was a bunch of them, you’d know it?”
Cade shook his head. “No, it can't be Human. I would scent them a mile away. They’d not know how to cover their tracks like this. This is definitely Other. It’s just …”
“It doesn’t make sense, though.”
“No. The way she was posed … there was a message in that.”
Gemma agreed. The way she held both her baby and her heart at either side of her. It had meant something. “Do you think it is a message for someone specific?”
Cade sighed and started the engine. He cast his eyes back toward the house, looking at Malcolm and Angela’s shadowy figures through the lounge windows. “Honestly, I haven’t got a clue. Like you said, she must have tried to get out, but there was no lock on that door. No way to keep it shut.”
“Unless someone was holding it closed.”
“They’d have been holding it closed on the other side then?”
Gemma tried to picture that. She'd not have clawed at the door if someone was in the room with her. She wouldn't have clawed at it if it wasn't locked—but there was no lock. “If someone was holding the door, then how did they kill her?”
“Maybe there were two of them?”
That would make sense—someone holding the door and someone inside. “Two Others could have carried her with ease?”
Cade nodded broodingly before pulling away from the kerb and heading to Gemma’s house.
She sat silently next to him, her gaze fixed on their surroundings outside, but her mind going over everything they knew so far. They could piece together a kind of image of what had happened—Jessica had been killed while someone held the door closed. She might have been carried there … but that was it.
They needed to get into her bedroom, into her things, and then maybe find out who the father of her baby was. She had to have something. Teenage girls were useless at keeping secrets, so she would have written it somewhere.
“What if she had been unconscious?” Gemma said after several minutes had passed. “I mean, there were no signs of struggle outside the room. What if they had taken her there unconscious?”
“That would make sense,” Cade said. “She was awake inside the room, but didn’t mean she had got in that way. There were no obvious traces she had been knocked out, though.”
“She could have been drugged?”
“Also a possibility," he said. "I'll get them to run blood works."
He pulled the car onto the main lane that led toward where Gemma lived. Cade was allowed to drive on the main lanes. Others usually weren't. They weren’t allowed out after certain times, or the sweepers would have them. Sweepers—Human enforcers—made sure Others kept to curfew. But Cade was exempt from them. He wouldn’t be able to do his job if he had to be in every night before ten.
The houses seemed to pass by in a blur as Gemma huddled back into her seat. She was about ready to yell at herself for the way her brain was ticking over everything. Every time she thought she had an answer, her mind said, ‘Yes, but what if?’, and then she was off again. But it wasn’t just that … It was the image of Jessica and her baby. As bizarre as it was, she couldn’t help the
pang of guilt that wormed itself inside her. The baby was just lying there, naked, bloodied and cold …
Cold? The baby was dead, she tried to tell herself. But still, it didn’t feel right to have left her so exposed. Like they should have covered her or something … wrapped her in a blanket the way a mother would have done. Her mind went to Connor … Had he been wrapped up? Had Cathy and Jeff swaddled him the way she would have done? Had they handled his tiny, lifeless body with the care and love she would have given him?
She hadn't seen him because they had said it wasn’t wise. They had said it was because he was a mix-breed—the breeds hadn’t taken and he didn’t look right. She couldn’t even imagine it. Even if he had had two heads and five arms, he would have been perfect. She hadn't got to hold him. She hadn't even got to see him, and it left such an emptiness in her arms. A desperate sob caught in her throat before she could stop it.
“Gem?”
“I’m fine," she grumbled.
“Are you—?”
She waved a hand, cutting him off, and leant forward when the estate came into view.
“Can we take another look?” The large chimney stuck out its ugly neck into the clear night sky. Once, that chimney would have belched out plumes of toxic fumes … Now, it was nothing more than a rusting pipe sticking out, an eyesore on the horizon. Gemma lived on the other side of it, and from her bedroom, she could see it easily standing tall above everything. “I want to check everywhere. I want to see outside, maybe there are signs of a fight or something. Or maybe the building itself. Did any of you check the carparks around the back? Maybe her car is there?”
Cade slowed the car to a crawl but didn’t stop fully. She could sense him debating over whether to let her off the hook and follow her change of topic. She was thankful when he eventually did the latter. She wasn’t sure that she would have managed to keep herself together if he pushed.
